Q: Why is organic chemistry so difficult? I don't understand
what's going on. My professor is confusing and I can't afford a
tutor. Her tests are unpredictable, and she tests on random things
she never went over in class or in the book. I thought I wanted to
major in chemistry and become a doctor. What should I do?

As you can see from the graph, my classes
have improved their scores on the ACS organic chemistry exam. How
did I do it? On reflection, I think I did several things that
combined to improve the scores…

The content of the OrgoCards is in
agreement with organic chemistry textbooks. Flash cards encourage
connecting the start and end together without a middle. The middle
is the explanation of why the reactions take place. My question is,
"How will a flash card improve your organic chemistry thinking?"
Read More...

I see a lot of people trying to find
an easy way to learn organic chemistry. That is the main hurdle to
learning, trying to find an easy way. If you wanted to learn to
drive a car, but didn't want to actually get behind the wheel, it
would be exactly the same. It isn't that learning to drive is so
difficult, but if you never actually drove, you could logically
complain about how difficult it was.

The analogy of learning a foreign language is also apt. The most
effective methods ask that you ... Read
More...

Why is organic chemistry hard? Your professor shows you a reaction
and the product. Why not just memorize it? It is fast and easy. You
know what the product is.

Does it matter if you don't know everything about the reaction?
Let's say you are in a strange place and you ask for directions.
The person giving them doesn't speak English very well. He knows
the terms 'left' and 'right' are the directions he needs to use,
but isn't sure which one is correct. Does it matter? Do you really
have to know every word? I learned that while traveling to ask the
person to also point in the general direction I had to travel. If
you want to understand, you must know the meaning of every word.
Just because you know the destination, does not mean you know how
to get there. What if you don't know the exact destination?

Here is the problem. Organic Chemistry is like a language. It is
easy to learn a number of phrases that one must use. Because it
does not contain the complexity of other languages, students do not
realize the importance of how reactions take place (the
mechanisms). Furthermore, for a number of reactions, the mechanism
may not be known. Therefore, the importance of having and using a
mechanism is left out of many reactions.

As students progress, the number and variety of problems increase.
Again, like learning a language, the phrases that were statements
are now questions and mixed in tense. You need to know how words
are used and varied. That is the difference between memorizing
phrases and understanding the words. To understand the words is to
understand the logic of the language. What is the equivalent in
organic chemistry? That is how mechanisms are useful. They are the
meaning for organic chemistry. They are the explanations of how and
why electrons move.

How do you learn mechanisms? I found this to be easy for me. I knew
I was going to be asked to solve a problem that used the mechanism
that was being taught on a new problem. It was clear to me that
before I could use that mechanism on a new problem that I had to be
able to write it for an old problem first. Therefore, I memorized
the mechanisms. I also found that as I memorized more mechanisms,
they were similar to mechanisms I already knew. I started from a
blank sheet of paper and wrote them out over and over until I could
write them without any notes.

While I could encourage students to do as I had done, I quickly
learned that my approach and abilities did not work for other
students. What I learned that I needed to do was to go back to how
a language is learned. You don't teach English to a child by
reading the New York Times to him or her. If you did, there would
be no context to the words and therefore no meaning would be
acquired. In college, I learned French. In the class, they took
phrases and gave us translations so we could grasp the meanings of
the words. However, they also made us use the words in class. They
varied the sentences so that new connections were created in our
brains that allowed us to use the words in meaningful ways.

What "The Language of Organic Chemistry" does is to reproduce that
process. The mechanisms are broken down into meaningful phrases.
The different parts contain portions of the problems. Mechanisms
are learned bit by bit. This is to teach the patterns of reactions
because our brains are efficient at learning patterns. Finally, the
book is laid out so you can make copies of pages because you cannot
learn a reaction by writing the solution a single time. (On this
last item, that was how initial versions of the book were created.
However, it is difficult for me to predict whether I can or should
maintain that format given the practicality of the publishing
process. Furthermore, I had anticipated that an electronic version
of the book would allow students to easily make copies of any page.
However, if the book were released as an unprotected version, there
would not be a book, but things change. Adobe has created a
mechanism that allows me to retain control of the .pdf files. In
that case, do we need the hard copy or does the hard copy need to
be in a format that can be easily photocopied?)